Chapter 54 How is He Going to Handle This?
“You got it wrong, Uncle Michael! You must have gotten it wrong!” Isabel wailed in terror. “Madeline is that b*tch, Cameron’s daughter! Did you forget about that? Madeline’s blood consists of Cameron’s dirty blood, so she can’t be a good person! She—Mmm!”
Before Isabel could finish her words, Michael pressed the cold sole of his shoe against her mouth.
He stomped on her mouth, and his gold-rimmed glasses glinted as he glared at her icily. “I told you that I’d pluck your teeth out if you utter a single bad thing about Madeline.”
Michael heartlessly pressed his foot against Isabel’s mouth before moving around in a circular motion. She let out a wail of agony as she tried to get away from him. Michael had never been one to hit women, but things were different today! He knew what Madeline’s life used to be like in the Taylor Family. Furthermore, he knew that Phoebe and Isabel were the two people who were the worst to Madeline.
While Sam was studying overseas, there wasn’t a single person in the Taylor Family who was good to Madeline. Phoebe and Isabel had even given Madeline all sorts of injuries by hitting her. Crystal was Cameron’s arch-enemy, yet even she couldn’t bear to see Isabel and Phoebe torturing Madeline. In the past, Crystal had once told Michael about how Isabel and Phoebe were abusing a child who was just a little older than ten. Back then, Madeline was still living with the Taylor Family, so Michael and Crystal didn’t do anything as they didn’t want to get involved.
However, when Michael recalled what Crystal told him in the past, and when he thought about how Phoebe and Isabel had abused Madeline, he felt a burning rage in his chest that only seemed to grow by the second. His whole body felt like it was on fire now. My daughter! Me and my wife’s only daughter.
Madeline was supposed to live the luxurious life of a princess if she had stayed with Michael in the past. He and his wife would have pampered and spoiled her, and she would have grown up without any of these troubles. However, the reality was that he had lost his daughter!
This ended up with Madeline being abandoned, trampled on, tortured… This was his greatest failure in life—it was the one thing he couldn’t forgive himself for. It hurt him until now!
He took all of the hatred and anger he felt and channeled it toward the bottom of his foot. He stepped on Isabel so fiercely that blood splattered all over the place as she screamed like a dying animal. As Isabel continued to thrash around, the sling bag that had been hanging from her shoulders was flung aside. A pile of pictures fell out of the bag and onto the floor. When Michael took a glance at the pictures, he seemed to stop breathing for a moment. Then, he lifted his foot off of Isabel before walking over to the pictures.
When he bent down to pick the pictures up, every image he saw only made his heart ache more than ever. These were all pictures of Madeline. They were pictures of Madeline being whipped, being cornered by a few people, being punched and kicked… There were even pictures of her lying on a bench, where her entire back was filled with blood…
Michael’s heart couldn’t handle the sight of these images, and he felt his vision turn black for a moment as it got harder for him to breathe. If Madeline is really my daughter… She’s really my daughter… How am I supposed to handle all of this?
He tightened his grip around the pictures as he pointed at Isabel. “You… You guys…” How could you guys do this to her? Even if her mother is really Cameron, and even if her mother was an illegitimate daughter, what has that got to do with her? How could you guys do such a thing? Michael felt like there was an icy hand squeezing his heart. His face turned pale as he breathed laboriously.
Madeline bent down and picked up all the pictures before she walked to Michael and took the pictures from him. She gazed at it for a moment before laughing. “Were you planning to use these to threaten me so that I’d save your mother?” she asked Isabel.
Isabel crawled up from the ground with a hand over her mouth. She was in too much pain to speak. “Sorry if I’m a little direct,” Madeline continued with a smile. “Seeing these things will only make me hate you even more. It makes me wish that your mother will be in jail for a few more years. Isn’t it hilarious that you would use these pictures to threaten me?”
“You… Aren’t you afraid that Sebastian might see these pictures?” Isabel spoke in a muffled voice. “Sebastian is the Young Master of the Hart Family—he’s handsome, classy, and refined. What about you? You’re worse than a maid! You’re a dirty woman, and you have no right to be with Sebastian! When he sees how horrible your life used to be, he will definitely hate you and find you disgusting! You… you don’t even have the right to know him! As long as you save my mother, I’ll help you keep this a secret. Otherwise, I’ll—”
“Shut up!” Michael interrupted her angrily. “Madeline is my daughter and the young lady of the Wendel Family. She has the right to be with anyone she wants!”
“No! That’s impossible!” Isabel refused to believe this. She wailed at him, “There must have been a mistake! Someone nasty like Isabel can’t possibly be—Ah!”
Before she finished her sentence, Michael gave her another kick. Then, he went forward and pressed his shoe against her chest before glaring at her with a deadly look in his eyes. “If you talk bad about Madeline again, I’ll pluck out all your teeth!”
Isabel grabbed onto the man’s ankle as she cried. “I’m Isabel, Uncle Michael! You can’t do this to me! Aunt Crystal loves me the most! She’s going to be mad if she finds out what you did to me!” Everyone around Michael knew that he loved his wife more than his own life. Apart from Crystal’s own daughters, Crystal was the fondest of Isabel and her brothers. How dare Michael treat Isabel that way? Wasn’t he afraid that Crystal would get mad?
When he heard his wife’s name, Michael felt dizzy once more. Crystal had a bad heart, and the doctors said that she had to take care of herself and avoid getting emotional. However, what would trigger more emotions than the fact that the daughter they had been caring for wasn’t their biological daughter? What would she feel when she found out that her biological daughter had been left out there to be tortured by others?
If Crystal knew about it, and if she knew about what Madeline went through, would she be able to handle it? Isabel thought that she had managed to convince her uncle when she saw him keeping quiet for a while.
This gave her more courage to push Michael away before getting onto her feet with the help of the wall beside her. “If you do anything bad to me, Aunt Crystal will definitely start an argument with you! Uncle Michael, please get my mom out of there. I’ll keep this a secret…” Her eyes lit up as she continued speaking. “Yes! That’s it! As long as you save my mother, I’ll definitely keep this a secret and never tell Aunt Crystal about it!”
Michael didn’t feel like speaking to someone as dumb as Isabel. He raised his voice to call one of his bodyguards. “Send her to the Taylor Family and bring her to Nigel. Tell him to keep an eye on this idiot so that she stops coming out to embarrass herself!”
His bodyguard bowed and proceeded to follow his orders. He ignored Isabel’s protests as he grabbed her arms and pinned them behind her before pushing her out of the room.
